State of the Aboriginal arts

ABORIGINAL culture goes on show in a new Adelaide festival.

State of the arts

SOUTH Australia’s Premier, Jay Weatherill, has long considered Adelaide a gateway to the desert and Aboriginal culture, but it wasn’t until BHP Billiton stumped up $4 million that his plan to present a major indigenous arts festival was a goer.

In October 2015, the Art Gallery of SA will lead 15 cultural institutions in staging what promises to be the most extensive celebration of contemporary Aboriginal culture the state has seen.

AGSA’s senior indigenous art curator Nici Cumpston has taken on the role of artistic director for the Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. She and AGSA director Nick Mitzevich felt the greatest way to make an impact was to collaborate with institutions across the spectrum, from Adelaide’s Experimental Art Foundation and the Adelaide City Council to the Botanic Gardens and Samstag Museum at the University of South Australia.

For 10 days from October 8, events including an art market, symposia and public programs will be held at participating venues. AGSA will dedicate its basement temporary galleries to a free, 20-artist exhibition which will open in October and remain on display throughout the summer months.

In addition, 1991 Venice Biennale artist and Ngarrindjeri woman, Yvonne Koolmatrie, will enjoy her first survey at her capital city gallery, in the upstairs contemporary space. Koolmatrie hails from the windswept Coorong, south of Adelaide, and her Murray River sedge grass weavings feature animals and items from nature as well as objects from everyday life such as letterboxes.

The collaborator list for the survey to be curated by Cumpston remains under wraps at press time but is expected to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across the nation. “It’s about giving South Australian artists the opportunity to be showcased among national artists,” Cumpston says. “The interesting thing is [they] are working in so many different media.”

Whereas the National Gallery of Australia’s Indigenous Art Triennials in Canberra focus on pieces that are already made, Adelaide’s exhibition will involve new commissions. The BHP Billiton funding will enable artists to create new works but ownership will remain with them, ensuring additional income should they sell them later on.

Mitzevich says the festival is planned as a one-off but he hopes that, if it is considered a success, it will become a regular event.

“AGSA’s collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art began in 1939 with the acquisition of Albert Namatjira’s watercolour Illum-Baura (Haasts Bluff), Central Australia. Significantly, it was the first acquisition by a state art gallery of a work of art by an Aboriginal artist,” he says.

“This project is a very exciting initiative and collaboration – both at a local and a national level – is a part of the way we are managing it.”

Oct 8-18: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
Various venues